Ghosts

Something white at the window 

 I was sat in the office writing notes when a large morphing white figure slowly pressed itself to the frosted window immediately to my right. 

It was almost dark outside and there was a bang of something hard on the glass

I shit myself 

And let out an unmanly squeak 

I am the only person working at this part of the hospice.

Another white figure appeared .

Looking out of the dark

I opened the window very carefully.

Ten Kashmir goats, were happily grazing on the hospice gardens as gales started to lash the Orme

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Religion

An envelope arrived on our doormat this morning. It was addressed to "The Householder" so I guess that means me. Inside was a leaflet headed "Why You Can Trust The Bible" and a genuinely hand-written letter which is shown below:-

 

To tell you the truth, I very rarely think about God, Jesus, The Bible and all that stuff. I just do not need it in my life. As far as I am concerned it's all medieval hocus pocus and a distraction from reality. In saying that I apologise to any visitors  for whom religion is their lifeboat.

Let's have a look at the leaflet's title: "Why You Can Trust The Bible". Well I am very sorry but you simply cannot trust The Bible.  The history of its emergence on paper is long and complicated, clouded by unjustified partisan claims by various Christian and Jewish groups. There is also the question of translation to consider and the impact of  Roman Catholicism and medieval monastic orders upon its transcription. Its earliest manifestations were  written centuries after the death of Jesus Christ. Signing up to such a dodgy literary  concoction seems very odd to me. It was created by men and not by any God.

As for Robert Lindley's question: Why does God allow suffering? Well, that's a very good question indeed. Why should African babies die from diarrhoea? Why should the rich get richer while the poor get poorer? Why should a smooth-talking tyrant like Bashar al-Assad wreak vengeance upon the already oppressed people of Syria - his own people?  Questions about suffering and  evil might well be endless.

Religion  remains a useful prop for millions of people. It helps them to get by and I am among the first to admit that there have been very many good Christians who have lived blameless lives of kindness and prayer, helping their fellow human beings and doing good in the name of God. However, it is also hard to dispute the truth that religion has been at the root of so much bad stuff - including wars, anti-abortion movements, overpopulation, bigotry and denial of some of the basic truths provided by science, history and archaeology.

I wonder if I should get in touch with Robert Lindley? Maybe not...

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Painting By Zoom

 

My chickens

The last time I met up with my friend Nia was in a cooking video call, where she made supper and I made breakfast. 

This morning we were painting and chatting.

A relaxing way of spending an hour.

Talking and painting.

I plumped for a naive but colourful collection of chickens 

She was more abstract in her much loved colours of blue and white.

I can highly recommend it. 

The conversation has a different pace than if we were talking face to face

The gaps are not awkward, 

They were filled with brush strokes and giggles and lots of I don’t know what I am doing

But like doing someone else’s jigsaw, or colouring in, or doodling 

The painting was strangely therapeutic and relaxing

Nia’s work

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Pavement

Sheffield and Manchester sit thirty five miles apart with the Pennine hills between them. Transport connections between the two cities are woeful. Living in south west Sheffield, the best road link for us is the two lane Snake Pass that weaves over the hills through The Peak District before descending to the town of Glossop with its inevitable hold-ups.

The bleakest part of The Snake Pass is a wild moorland area known as Snake Summit. It feels as if you are on the roof of England when you are up there. A long distance footpath bisects the road. It is The Pennine Way that runs from Edale in Derbyshire to  Kirk Yetholm just over the Scottish border. 268 miles in total.

Yesterday, I commanded Clint to take me to Snake Summit. "Certainly my lord,"  he snivelled. I sat on the back seat reading a book as my South Korean servant transported me to my desired location.

With boots on, I set out south from the road along The Pennine Way. The landscape was a huge peat bog that would have been treacherous to traverse were it not for the paving stones laboriously placed there several years ago by The Peak Park Authority. I estimate that I stepped over seven thousand paving stones before reaching MIll Hill that overlooks The Ashop Valley and the northern edge of The Kinder Plateau.

Kinder seen from Mill Hill

There I sat down on a  small guidestone to eat my apple and observe the moorland landscape.  There's little life up there. A few meadow pipits and red grouse and where the bog relents a handful of hardy sheep. I could see "The Edge" of the Kinder Plateau and recalled the day  I walked along it observing its outdoor gallery of weathered outcrops that seemed like abstract sculptures.

A woman from Glossop in  a magenta anorak and an amber bobble hat reached Mill Hill soon after me and we chatted for a while. She was a Londoner who had moved up to Glossop ten years ago to build a totally new life there. Fortunately, the plan had worked.  She walks the nearby hills very regularly, breathing in the fresh northern air while maintaining her fitness.

I returned to Clint along the same three mile  path, treading on the same paving stones and when I reached him he said, rather obsequiously, "Your carriage awaits sir."

Looking towards Manchester from Black Moor

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Long Legged, Thin Lipped

Waiting outside the vets

My Hitchcock lecture tonight was the most disappointing of the eight I’d signed up for. It felt very cobbled together so I left after an hour and listened to the end of the David Sidaris essay on radio 4, which was more stimulating but somewhat sadder.

In retrospect I hadn’t then realised that I was in no mood for Hitchcock . I had just spent an unsatisfactory hour and a half or so at the vets, being gently bullshitted by well intentioned young vet about Mary’s recurrent ear infection. 

I was polite enough, recognising the way she covered what she didn’t know but when she commented that the old surgery on Mary’s ear was heavy handed then asked where I had the surgery done, my lips went thin and I hardened my tone and stare .

“ The operation was done here !” I reminded her.

My tone and lips became even thinner after I was kept waiting twice for a discussion then for meds which had been labelled incorrectly. 

“This has not been a good consultation “ I told the vet, something she didn’t follow up

I guess that the Hitchcock lecture just irritated me more 

Today’s good news is that I have picked the colour of my bedroom walls.

Given the fact I have a gently vaulted bedroom ceiling which will be painted a brilliant white, the room can take a dark tone of wall colour.

So this will be the palate I will use.....a deep dark blue

Oh.....and Thank you all for your painting advice . I have found the exploration really interesting and somewhat challenging as now I will have to change my bedroom curtains too. 

Expensively glorious Curtains that my husband and I bought together from Laura Ashley 

Our very first purchase for a shared home.

I thought it was Wednesday today and am somewhat disappointed that it is  Thursday . 

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😊

 Praying 

And waiting 

With hope 

And expectation 

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Growth

Long time visitors to "Yorkshire Pudding" may recall that last year I drew special attention to our planet's relentless population growth. It was on February 4th of 2020 that I noted the world's population was 7,762,009,632 and increasing day by day.

Since then we have all been cowering in the shadow of COVID19. Death stalks us like an escaped beast, waiting to take us in moments of weakness. Surely with what COVID has done, the planet's population must have been in freefall but that is far from the truth. Today, almost fourteen months after my initial blogpost, Earth's population is 7,854, 418, t43

In fourteen months our population has risen by 92 million. Only 2,755,000 have died from coronavirus in that same period of time. 92 million extra earthlings. That's  a much bigger number of people  than the current population of Great Britain, bigger than Germany or Turkey and  more than the Democratic Republic of Congo, bigger than the populations of California, Texas and Florida put together. It makes you think.

I find this rampant growth extremely concerning. In the last year I have seen miles of TV footage connected with this damned pandemic  and I have read thousands of words about it. I don't know about you but in the main media outlets I have seen and read almost nothing about population growth in the past year. 

Every extra human being puts extra strain on this planet's limited resources. All 92million  need to eat and keep warm when it is cold. I am not offering any solutions - just highlighting the issue.

Surely, if all this attention, this money, this sacrifice, this worry is being devoted to COVID and its effects we should be saving some of that stuff up for population growth. If it goes on this way we will implode as even Prince Philip recognised.

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